Power Ranger David Yost: I Quit 'Because I Was Called Faggot' One Too Many Times'
In an announcement that will shock many of you — TO YOUR CORE — 41-year-old actor David Yost, who played the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers' Billy Cranston (aka Blue Ranger), has come out. But that's not where the story ends.
Yost says he quit the show because he was harassed over his sexuality. "Creators, producers, writers, directors" all threw the F-word around at him. Yost, whose character was written out in subsequent franchise incarnations, reveals in a lengthy interviewthat he "walked off set one day in the middle of lunch," a move he had been thinking about for about a week. "Continuing to work in an environment like that is really difficult. I myself was struggling with who I was, or what I was, and to be made fun of on some level, or to be stereotyped, or put into a category … I was continually being told I'm not worthy of where I am because I'm quote-unquote a gay person and I'm not supposed to be an actor and can't be a superhero." His co-stars, Yost says, were beckoned into producers' offices on multiple occasions to be quizzed about his sexuality.
And after leaving the show, everything was swell? No. He spent two years trying to "pray the gay away," had a nervous break down, checked himself into a mental hospital for five weeks, and upon his release he moved to Mexico for a year. "It frustrated me that I hated myself on such a level that I couldn't accept myself."
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